A spectrometer is an instrument that measures the properties of electromagnetic radiation over a portion of the electromagnetic spectrum. The variable typically measured is the intensity of the radiation at each frequency across the portion of the spectrum measured. A spectrometer may include a component, such as a grating, that diffracts spectral radiation to which the spectrometer is exposed into component wavelengths and reflects each component wavelength in a different path across an array of photosensors of a detector associated with the spectrometer. A common type of photosensor is pixel.
The sensitivity of the photosensor array of a spectrometer varies with the wavelength of spectral radiation. For example, the sensitivity of the detector of a given spectrometer to incoming radiation at a wavelength of 550 nanometers (nm) may be very high, compared to the sensitivity of the photosensors of that spectrometer to spectral radiation at 800 nm. As a result, the spectral response for the detector array of a given spectrometer may be graphed as a curve.
Typically, sensitivity of a spectrometer detector is relatively low at the maximum and minimum wavelengths of the portion of the spectrum being measured. This characteristic may lead to noise that drowns out the data collected by the spectrometer. Accordingly, there is a need for a method and system for enhancing the spectral sensitivity of spectrometers that compensates for variations in spectral response of the array of photosensors of the detector across the portion of the electromagnetic spectrum being measured.